


Coconut and Chamomile

by R0seColoredGlasses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amortentia, Better Than Canon, F/F, Fluff, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Mutual Pining, Useless Lesbians, lavender deserved better than rowling treated her, theyre 16 and the most intimate part is a kiss so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27718801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R0seColoredGlasses/pseuds/R0seColoredGlasses
Summary: Amortentia, potions class and pining. I swear the story is better than the summary :)
Relationships: Lavender Brown/Hermione Granger
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	1. Hermione

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER; I DONT OWN THESE CHARACTERS AND I DON'T PROFIT FROM THE HARRY POTTER FRANCHISE.
> 
> Lavender Brown deserves better and Ron was pretty pathetic so realistically he wouldn't have been the one to break up with her... that's the hill I will die on.
> 
> Yes, amortentia is a fanfic cliche but it’s popular for a reason
> 
> This work isn't beta read and is non-canon

It wasn’t that Hermione was jealous of Lavender… she just didn’t want to see her and Ron together. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but despite her best effort, she acted on it. Lavender probably took it as a sign that Hermione wanted to steal Ron from her, that she liked Ron… that wasn’t it. 

Whatever the reason was, their fights had been getting worse by the day. Hermione couldn’t help but rise to the bait that Ron gave, as though he was trying to provoke the girls… but it always worked. Maybe the prat liked the idea of being fought over. It seemed just like the sort of thing he’d get off on. 

She and Lavender had been quite unfriendly, but they’d had a heart-to-heart after their last fight. Lavender had cried into her shoulder and let Hermione hold her, and Hermione’s heart hurt for her more than it ever should have. She didn’t even let Parvati comfort her like that. Hermione remembered holding her hand for a while after, and telling her that Ron didn’t deserve her.it was possibly the most cathartic realization the two of them had had together. 

It hurt that Lavender was so distant. Hermione never considered the two of them close, but it didn’t feel right to try and hate her. She’d always quite liked Lavender: in first year, she was the only girl who made an effort to include Hermione (of course, she’d never had any friends so she rejected the attempts at friendship every time, not knowing quite what to do) but Lavender had never given up on her. Before the Yule Ball, she’d dragged Hermione along with her and Parvati and Padma to Hogsmeade to pick out dresses, she’d told her she looked beautiful and helped her with her hair. After the ball they had cried together-- Lavender was an empathetic crier, with others Hermione found that to be an annoying trait, but with Lavender it just seemed sweet and genuine. Lavender was the bubbly and enthusiastic to Hermione’s down-to-earth and uninvolved. She made Hermione feel something she couldn’t quite put her finger on… she liked it, and it bothered her at the same time. She wondered if there was something wrong with her… if she’d been hexed or something.

She couldn’t stop herself staring at Lavender, thinking about her easy laugh and smile, her beautiful eyes and elegant blonde curls and her sweet irish accent… it was so easy to like her: the way she took the world by storm and wore her heart on her sleeve was downright admirable. Plus, she had a really cute arse, and Hermione hardly thought it was her fault that it was downright hard to look away from. 

It didn’t feel right to miss her like this. Every winter before, Lavender would hold her hands in the halls between classes because her fingers were cold. She would bring her cauldron cakes and other sweets when Hermione missed meals due to studying. She noticed the little things, even though they supposedly weren’t close. 

To make matters worse, Ron and Lavender had finally broken up. This would have been fantastic had it not been for the fact that Ron was her assigned brewing partner. His foul mood could curdle any potion they made. Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her seat, all-too-aware that Ron seemed to be glaring at anything that moved. It was, to say the least, unpleasant. However, what more could she expect from Ronald Weasley? Decency? Imagine… 

Hermione had witnessed their breakup the morning before in the common room. Lavender had been looking quite uneasy, and Ron looked livid, but mercifully, the presence of his peers had kept him from freaking out on the girl. Inevitably, Ron had been taking it out on everyone around him. 

Professor Slughorn came puffing into the classroom in his usual manner. This time, the blowhard was carrying a bottle of some bright pink potion and, as he settled behind his desk in the front of the room, he set it carefully upon the rough-hewn wooden table and uncorked it.

“Good afternoon, class! Now, let’s get right down to it, who can tell me what this lovely potion here is?” He said loudly, beaming at the sea of weary faces in front of him.

Hermione’s hand was first in the air. While she didn’t know yet, she had a solid guess what the potion could be, 

“Yes, Miss Granger, come up and examine it, tell me what you think this is, please.” Slughorn beckoned her over. “Don’t be shy, now.” 

At the front of the class, Hermione picked up the vial and held it to the light. The firelight illuminating the dungeon classroom flickered through the translucent mix and made it turn opalescent. She sniffed it gently before putting it back down. It smelled all too familiar to her, and she had to fight not to pick it up and smell it again.

“It’s amortentia, sir,” she said mildly. 

“Yes indeed it is! Now, how could you identify it, Miss Granger? What’s so special about amortentia?” Slughorn prompted, looking at her expectantly.

“Well, it’s a love potion. It smells different to everyone: whomever you find most attractive, that’s who you’ll smell.” Before Hermione could stop herself, she looked over at Lavender, only to meet her eyes. She flushed at having been caught staring and turned away quickly. 

“Thank you, Miss Granger, you can take your seat,” Slughorn said. He waved his wand at the blackboard and a piece of chalk sprung to life and began writing out instructions. “You will all be brewing Amortentia today. 

Oh dear. 

Ronald was not the person to make such a delicate potion with. He was hardly the person to make the simplest potion with, but she really had no choice. Slughorn had told Hermione privately upon her assignment to Ron that he was pairing up the best and worst students in class, in hopes that the worst students would follow examples from their partners and learn a thing or two. She didn’t have it as bad as Neville, the designated “worst in class” who was paired with Draco Malfoy. 

When they began the potion, placing the cauldron carefully on the fire, Hermione was the one who went to the storage cupboard, pulling out everything she would need and arranging the array of ingredients oh-so-carefully on the table in order of their placement and timing in the potion. 

Ron turned towards the cauldron and sniffled. His nose was quite red, and he was apparently coming down with a cold. Just great. The very last thing Hermione needed was for him to sneeze and add his snots into the potion. 

\--

“Now Ron, be very careful not to stir for the next ten minutes,” Hermione reminded Ron nervously for about the fourth time. Their potion was almost perfect, but any excess motion could potentially compromise the vapors the potion was putting off and ruin the almost-amortentia. 

“Geez I know already!” he snapped back at her, “can you get off my back? You never seem to shut up, do you?” 

Hermione opened her mouth to retort but realized that would only be proving him right. She resigned herself to sulking and preparing the final two ingredients. As she carefully shredded her rose petals, she shook her head and pinched herself to stay focused. The whole classroom smelled like amortentia and it was very distracting. 

Everytime she turned her head, she got a new whiff of sherry, lavender buds and Chamomile and soap: the smell of her roommate and the reason she was going to end up messing up the brew if she wasn’t careful. She sprinkled the rose petals on the surface and let them saturate and sink down into the simmering mix, watching as they disappeared and the potion took on a rosy glow.

She took a moment to turn and watch Lavender, sitting two rows behind her and hanging her head over her cauldron, inhaling the vapors and laughing a bit. Hermione bit back the urge to laugh with her, the silly girl’s antics were nothing short of adorable, especially as Lavender leaned down further and her curly blonde ponytail fell forwards over her face. 

“Oy! What are you grinning about?” Ron snapped at Hermione from the other side of her own cauldron. 

“I hardly think that’s your business,” Hermione said stiffly, returning her focus to her work and forcing the smile warming her face into a haughty pair of pursed lips. 

She could have swore she heard a muttering of “damn harpy” from Ron, but she brushed it off. 

When it was finally time to take the potion off the fire and bottle it, Ron shoved her forwards towards the professor’s desk to present it to him for assessment. Right behind her were Neville, Lavender and Dean, all of whom had similarly rosy-colored potions. 

“Exemplary work, Miss Granger, Mister Weasley!” Slughorn puffed proudly. 

Hermione bobbed her head and, before returning to her table, turned towards Lavender and murmured; “your potion looks quite lovely, you and Parvati did a great job!” Lavender blushed fiercely but still smiled. 

“You too!” she beamed. 

_

For the rest of the day, Hermione couldn’t focus on anything but the absolutely heavenly smell of the amortentia, no matter how hard she tried to shake it out of her mind.

Naturally, when Lavender approached her in the common room at the end of the day, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.


	2. Lavender

Lavender and Hermione had been fighting a lot… mostly over Ron. 

The two girls were roommates and of course they fought over little stuff… but something felt different about this. This was the kind of thing friends didn’t come back from. 

Their last fight was a shouting match in the middle of their dorm. They had bickered and yelled and calmed down and bickered again. But Lavender remembered Hermione say through her tears: “why are we fighting over that git anyway?” 

That night Lavender had found her way to an apology for the first time, telling Hermione how much she hated fighting about Ron, how sorry she was. Hermione had hugged her for the first time that year and let Lavender sob into her shoulder. She told Lavender that they both deserved better than Ron.

And, privately, she agreed. She’d stopped liking Ron a long while ago. All he ever wanted to do was touch her, but sometimes Lavender didn’t want to just snog. Just because she was pretty and giggly and sometimes a bit frivolous, didn’t mean she was glib. She wanted something more interesting than what Ron could give her. But she stayed with him. More often than not, Ron would talk about Hermione, and Lavender had started to see what the hype was about.

Maybe it was all the cute little curls. Maybe it was the brown doe-eyes and long, fluttery lashes. Maybe it was the way her hands were always warm when she let Lavender hold her hands in the corner to heat up her cold, shaky fingers as they traveled between classes. Maybe it was the way she smiled so easily when her guard was down, or the way she knew a little about everything, or the way she always made time for someone who needed her. Maybe it was the way she put her all into everything she decided to do… whatever the reason, Lavender had always admired Hermione, but these days the girl consumed more and more of her waking thought. 

For god's sake, even Parvati knew at this point. Last weekend instead of partying with Ron, she and Parvati had gotten tipsy and wandered up to the astronomy tower. That night Lavender was practically waxing poetic, talking about Hermione and only Hermione. Parvati had an understanding look in her eye, and at the end of the night as they headed to bed, she’d suggested it was time to break up with her boyfriend.

Ron was shooting Lavender absolutely irate looks across the potions classroom. He had been partnered with Hermione, which was the only reason Lavender bothered glancing their way.

The breakup hadn’t been bad, but it had hardly been pleasant. She had done it in the common room the previous morning so that Ron wouldn’t make a scene. She hadn’t given him a reason when he demanded one, she would have been far too embarrassed, and he wouldn’t have understood. He hadn’t told anyone, but word had gotten around fast anyway. That night she and Hermione hadn’t argued. 

Professor Slughorn came into the classroom and commenced the lesson, but Lavender’s mind was elsewhere… until Hermione raised her hand. She looked pretty this morning. So, so pretty. Lavender had noticed as she got dressed and watched as she tied her hair up with a little gold ribbon. Warm colors like that just looked good on her.

Hermione went up to his desk and identified the potion on it: amortentia. It had a pretty rosy color to it, a lot like the color of Lavender’s bedroom walls at home. 

“And what’s so special about this potion, Miss granger?” Slughorn asked. She suddenly found herself very tuned in. 

“Well, it’s a love potion. It smells different to everyone: whomever you find most attractive, that’s who you’ll smell.” Lavender thought Hermione met her eyes for a second. Her gaze seemed to reach right to where she sat at the back of the room. 

Lavender’s heart fluttered. What was wrong with her?

\--

The potion was going well so far, it was almost finished and had finally started releasing vapors. The whole classroom smelt of it! 

“Hey Lav, what does it smell like to you?” Parvati asked quietly, almost conspiratorially.

Lavender couldn’t help but smile as she took a deep breath in and fully analysed it. It smelt incredibly familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it… 

“It smells like our dorm room… but I’m not sure what part.” she turned to look at Parvati , who looked positively puzzled. “Erm, I suppose it smells like coconut oil, and maybe a bit like the library, sort of dusty, and… what?” her friend was laughing. 

“Well what does yours smell like?” Lavender demanded.

“That boy I wrote to you about last summer who lives across the street, remember? He always smelled like sunscreen and cigarettes,” Parvati giggled. 

“Oh yes. Him.” Lavender wrinkled her nose. 

“Come on, you seriously don’t know who it smells like?” Parvati said finally, once she stopped laughing. 

“Well… I- I guess I-” for the first time in her life, Lavender was speechless. 

“Oh please, who have you been looking at all class? Who puts on coconut oil every morning? Who spends all her time in the library to the point where her robes smell like it?” 

“Ugh… this is so embarrassing!” Lavender was caught. But then again, she hadn’t been subtle. Whoever loved her, she figured their potion probably smelled like booze.

“Oh come on! Lavender, it’s okay! It’s the smell of love, you’ve gotta make it yours. Own it, ya know?” Parvati said, with a hand on her shoulder. 

She was right. Lavender knew she was… maybe it was time to embrace it. 

She leaned over and put her face over the simmering liquid while Parvati just laughed. Lavender closed her eyes and began to laugh too. The warm feeling of the steam and the sound of laughter and smell of Hermione filled her senses and she let it stay that way until she leaned too far and her ponytail fell in her face. 

She heard another giggle from somewhere around Hermione’s table and looked up to see the girl smiling at her warmly, which made Lavender blush far too hard. 

This was utterly ridiculous. She had to do something about this. 

\--

Lavender was a Gryffindor. Neville was a Gryffindor because he faced anyone who stood in his way, no matter his fear. Harry was a Gryffindor because no matter how many reasons people gave him to hate them, he would still be their hero. Hermione was a Gryffindor because to her, obstacles like fear and risk were nonexistent. Lavender was all those things, but she was a Gryffindor because she could be brave in her everyday life: no matter how many times people hurt her, she wore her heart on her sleeve proudly. It was time for her to live up to this once more. 

After a particularly strong drink and copious encouragement from Parvati, Lavender steeled herself before marching, chin up, through the Gryffindor common room towards the armchair where Hermione sat with her book. 

“Hermione?” she said quietly, waiting for Hermione to look up and notice her, but she was so deep in her book. She looked so pretty in the firelight and it was a shame, Lavender thought, that she'd be dragging her out of the room. 

“Hmm?” Hermione said mildly, barely looking up from her book… until she did a double take when she noticed it was Lavender. “Oh, Lavender it’s you, is everything alright?”

“Yes it is… erm, could we talk about something? Somewhere else?” she said awkwardly. 

“Oh, sure, alright.” Mercifully, Hermione said nothing else as she followed Lavender out of the portrait hole into the corridor and towards an empty classroom. They walked in silence and listened to nothing but footfalls as they went. Lavender held the door for her and flicked her wand at the empty sconces, illuminating their faces and the room around them.

“So Lavender, what’s this about, exactly?” Hermione finally asked. She looked at her through those warm, curious brown eyes and Lavender’s voice stopped in her throat.

“It- it’s about erm…” fuck, she should have given this some thought. “It’s about potions today. The amortentia.”

“Oh?” Hermione had a curious look on her face, along with something Lavender didn’t quite recognize, but she blazed forward anyway.

“My potion smelled just like you. It smelled like your coconut oil and your books, and like you. I know this is sudden and weird, but I really mean it!” she blurted out, finally. 

“Oh. I-” 

“I’m sorry Hermione!” It wasn’t like Lavender to be this nervous at all.

“No Lavender, listen! I… I think mine smelled like you. I just don’t know what to make of it.” she said. “But what about Ron?”

“I liked him a bit… until he opened his mouth,” Lavender scoffed, making Hermione laugh too. “But I stayed with him because it was easier to just… not break up with him. At one point I tried to be clingy and annoying so he’d break up with me, but I guess I didn’t annoy him enough…”

“Well, I think I was right after all,” Hermione said, “you’re far too good for him.” 

Lavender’s senses were taken over by the smell of amortentia- no, Hermione- as she let the other girl pull her in close and she leaned in. 

“Can I kiss you?” Lavender whispered.

Instead of a response, Hermione just took Lavender’s lips in her own and held her closer. She smiled against the blonde’s lips as she whispered to her:

“I’ve been wanting to do that for so long!” Oh, how Lavender could get lost in her!

“Took you long enough,” Lavender whispered back as she dug her hands into Hermione’s curls and cradled the back of her head. There came that familiar feeling of wanting to dissolve into the body pressed against her own, to disappear and drown in Hermione’s vast ocean. In that perfect moment, it felt like she would be doing just that.


End file.
